Look back on the highs and heartbreaks of the season and honor TV's graduating class of 2019

In the era of Peak TV, when multiple new shows premiere every week, it can be hard to remember what we watched a month ago, let alone in the fall, when the 2018-2019 TV season kicked off. Real gems and standout moments are forgotten in the sands of time or lost in the sea of summer TV. So let's reflect upon all the glorious things we got to witness over the past nine months across broadcast, cable, and streaming.

To that end, we've awarded some of the biggest and buzziest moments of the TV season with their own special superlative, celebrating the Best Binge, Biggest Twist, Best BFFs, and so much more. We also want to honor television's graduating class of 2019, so we're reminiscing on the most heartbreaking twist in Jane the Virgin's final season and the importance of seeing a couple like One Day at a Time's Syd and Elena. Plus, TV Guide's valedictorian, Shadowhunters alum Kat McNamara, shares a heartfelt sendoff to the show that changed her career.

Check back every day for new honorees in TV Guide's 2018-2019 TV Yearbook!

Valedictorian

Kat McNamara, whose Freeform show Shadowhunters came to a close this spring after four seasons, shares her thoughts on this time of transition. Reflecting on how far she's come since landing the starring role in the supernatural drama at the age of 19, McNamara expresses her gratitude for how the show shaped her into who she is today and helped teach her to turn even the toughest situations into opportunities for growth and reflection. Check out McNamara's valedictorian essay...

Senior Quotes

The 2018-2019 TV season has come to a close, but we can't let our favorite shows take a hard-earned summer vacation without paying our respects. And while we've got plenty to say about the best and buzziest moments of the year, it's only right to let these characters speak for themselves. So in addition to scribbling Have a great summer and You rock, never change in everyone's yearbooks, we've also rounded up the season's most definitive TV quotes.

Superlatives

YOU might have earned very little fanfare during its freshman run on Lifetime, but after it hit Netflix in December, the stalker-thriller became the must-binge show of the season — with a reported 40 million-plus subscriber views in its first few weeks on the platform — and it completely lived up to the hype. The series, which will officially move to Netflix for its second season, was clearly built for the traditional broadcast landscape of its original home, and yet YOU plays out so much more effectively in a streaming format. Keep reading about YOU...

Looking at the trailer for PEN15, you might think the show is another one of TV's attempts to pass off nostalgia as content or that a one-note sight gag of two grown women playing 13-year-olds is all the show has to offer. True, watching creators and stars Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle mix with actual teens never gets old and gel pens are the kind of "only '90s kids will understand..." material that networks are desperate for, but beyond these easy selling points is the real reason to watch: It's a poignant story of friendship, because PEN15's Maya and Anna were the best BFFs (BBFFs) on television this season. Keep reading about PEN15...

They say New York was the fifth character on Sex and the City, but Natasha Lyonne's hair was the first character on Russian Doll. As Nadia, a gravel-voiced game coder who can't seem to stop dying on the night of her own birthday party, Lyonne sported a fiery, irrepressible tangle of curls, set apart from all of TV's other, far-too-perfect curls by a curtain of wild bangs. It was the season's best TV hair by a long shot. Keep reading about Russian Doll...

The team behind The Masked Singerknew what some of us cranky, unimaginative, and jaded bores did not: the public has an unquenchable appetite for absurd, escapist, family-friendly television, not to mention campy pop hits and watching B-level celebrities take part in a mildly suspenseful guessing game. The Masked Singer proved a huge hit for Fox, becoming the highest-rated unscripted debut in more than seven years, and the series continued its dominance through its freshman run. Keep reading about The Masked Singer...

Supernatural's constant end-of-the-world stakes leave little room for embattled brothers Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) to have a moment to themselves. However, The CW show's milestone 300th episode, titled "Lebanon," not only provided the Winchesters with a much-needed break from their hectic life of demon-hunting but also gave the duo long-awaited closure in what turned out to be the best reunion of the TV season. Keep reading about Supernatural...

It isn't until several minutes into The Haunting of Hill House's sixth episode of its first season, "Two Storms," that you realize something special is going on. It's a simple two-shot, with the focus on Shirley working on her sister in the foreground and Theo anxiously drinking brown liquor in the background. At least, it seems simple. But on reflection, it's the first step in a meticulous dance that creator and director Mike Flanagan choreographed, a routine so complex and full of moving parts that one minor error would send it all crashing down. Keep reading about The Haunting of Hill House...

When it comes to the best-dressed shows of the television season, you could make a strong argument for several contenders. Jane the Virgin, Killing Eve, black-ish, The Bold Type, Riverdale — all these shows feature highly enviable fashion, but do you know what they don't feature enough of? CAPES. Capes are purely an aesthetic choice, and one that signifies the wearer is both stylish as hell and not one to get bogged down in the mundanities of life. In summation, they are pure Look. Knowing this, it seems inevitable that the series that best embraced the art of the cape this TV season was American Horror Story, which prioritizes aesthetics as much as, and sometimes even more than, storytelling. Keep reading about American Horror Story: Apocalypse...

The Walking Dead underwent enormous changes in Season 9, both in front of and behind the camera. Top-billed actor Andrew Lincoln left, while executive producer Angela Kang took over as showrunner. Onscreen, a six-year time jump allowed the show to introduce a bunch of new characters. The splashiest of those new characters was skin suit-wearing psycho Alpha (Samantha Morton), who was as disturbingly intense as you wanted her to be. But she wasn't the breakout of the season. That honor goes to Connie, a deaf woman who's holding her own in the zombie apocalypse, played by deaf actress Lauren Ridloff. Keep reading about The Walking Dead...

We should not still be choosing sides in a love triangle in Jane the Virgin's final season. The early years of The CW telenovela pivoted on Jane's (Gina Rodriguez) romantic entanglement with her boyfriend-turned-husband Michael (Brett Dier) and her baby daddy-turned-almost fiancé Rafael (Justin Baldoni), but the show has always done its best work elsewhere: in its delicate explorations of faith and sexuality, in its illumination of immigration stories, in the fraught but unbreakable bond between three generations of Villanueva women. This is the Jane we would like to be celebrating. Instead, we're here to re-bury a reanimated love triangle because it did not come back the same. Keep reading about Jane the Virgin...

Netflix's eight-episode docuseries Our Planet, which comes from the creators of the BBC's Planet Earth in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund, exposes viewers to the harsh realities currently challenging the natural world. Its insightful but pointed commentary about why these environments are all worth saving is aided by an unflinching look at the ways in which Earth has been damaged by our own hands. Keep reading about Our Planet...

The Showtime incarnation of Desus & Mero is the most fully realized version of the Bodega Boys' vision yet. They've come a long way from when they were just two dudes from the Bronx with regular degular day jobs whose hilarious tweets got them a podcast at Complex. They had zero Hollywood connections until about five years ago. They were just guys on the internet. But they were so smart and so funny that they couldn't be denied. Sometimes America actually is a meritocracy. The glow-up is real, the brand is strong. Keep reading about Desus & Mero...

Starting in September, five months before Beverly Hills' ninth season premiered on Bravo, the current cycle of side-picking and impassioned fan debates began when Radar Online first broke the story of what has come to be known as Puppygate. But little did we know then that the ramifications of this "scandal" would alter the trajectory of the entire reality series and turn friends against each other, both on the show and in real life. Because this isn't just about whether or not you think Lisa Vanderpump conspired to punish Dorit Kemsley on TV and in the press; it's about whether or not the show can survive without Lisa Vanderpump. Keep reading about Real Housewives of Beverly Hills...

Game of Thrones' eighth and final season was an absolute bloodbath, with many characters losing their lives and personalities in the process of taking down the Night King and the two Mad Queens. However, Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) remained mostly unscathed in the end, even if she didn't get as much power as she might have deserved. In fact, hers may have been the most consistent character arc of the entire season, as she spent nearly all her time doing what she does best: telling it like it is. Keep reading about Game of Thrones...

In the world of unjust TV cancellations, Counterpart coming to an end after two seasons earlier this year might not register immediately. After all, the thrilling sci-fi spy show starring J.K. Simmons in a dual role actually completed its story, for all intents and purposes, in the Season 2 finale "Better Angels." But even though the episode doubles well as a series finale, there was ultimately more to the story, and the sadness of Counterpart's cancellation comes in knowing not only this, but also that an original and inventive series was once again canceled too soon while more and more lifeless remakes and adaptations are continuing on. Keep reading about Counterpart...

In some ways, being the new show most likely to succeed also means being a bit predictable. Given the popularity of Kurt Sutter's Sons of Anarchy by the end of its run in 2014, one could predict that the biker drama's spin-off, Mayans M.C., would be similarly successful, at least at the outset. But by the end of its first season, Mayans M.C. wasn't a retreading of Sons of Anarchy, nor was it just a successful spin-off; the show dared to be about something more than just the outlaw attitude and culture that made Sons so popular, and that might just make it a better show than Sons of Anarchy. Keep reading about Mayans M.C...

Despite the stiff competition, The Good Doctorbecame the most-watched show of the fall the year it premiered by taking people along for the feel-good ride of watching Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) become a surgeon. But along with that success comes the pressure to maintain it, and that pressure often leads to shows jumping the shark in desperate reaches for ratings. While The Good Doctor did drop in ratings in Season 2, a full ratings point in fact, the show has maintained its creative steam without resorting to Shaun doing complex surgeries in a helicopter during a windstorm or having him miraculously catapulted to being president of St. Bonaventure. Keep reading about The Good Doctor...

"A Little Bit Alexis" was far from the only great original song we got this television season, but what truly made the Schitt's Creeksingle stand above the rest is the fact that the song is also a bona fide BANGER. Drawing inspiration from Britney Spears (the influence of "Work Bitch" is particularly obvious), "A Little Bit Alexis" completely stands on its own as an irresistibly catchy pop song while still delivering moments of unmatched lyrical and physical comedy. Keep reading about Schitt's Creek...

At first glance, why Syd (Sheridan Pierce) and Elena (Isabella Gomez) earned this title might seem obvious. After all, Sydlena is an incredibly cute, queer couple who challenged boundaries of both sexuality and gender; Syd is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. But the real reason Sydlena is snagging this superlative from the many other sexy, sensitive, and compassionate couples on TV is the absolutely perfect way One Day at a Timenavigated Elena's decision to lose her virginity. Keep reading about One Day at a Time's Sydlena...